Poetry and Life
I’ve been a poetry fan for many years. Starting in my elementary school days with the likes of Shel Silverstein and Dr. Seuss, two of my lifelong heroes, I found that poetry could scratch several different itches. It could make me laugh, even when I was down. It could make me cry or at least feel someone else’s pain. (Have you ever read The Giving Tree?) It could tell a darn good story. It could teach, introducing me to new ideas, interesting places, fascinating characters.
In junior high and high school, I learned other things about poetry, thanks to different teachers, classes, and books. It could be boring. It could be exceptionally difficult to understand. It didn’t always rhyme. And sometimes, just sometimes, it could soar. Like others before me, I fell in love with Poe’s Annabel Lee, struggled with Shakespeare, was intrigued by Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and became acquainted with wonderful poems by Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson.
I also began writing poetry. It was a fascinating endeavor, almost magical. With poetry I could create something brand new. I could speak about things that I tended to keep to myself. Poetry was useful in processing difficult things in my life. I could write something about this or that girl I loved, then choose what to do with it from there.
I eventually put poetry away for awhile. I didn’t give it up. It’s just that I became busy (or preoccupied) with college, law school, marriage, job, career, and raising a family. There was no time for poetry, you see.
But I had it all wrong. After my kid sister died in a car wreck at the age of twenty, I took up the pen once more, writing a poem for my mother, a tribute to Karyn on what would have been her twenty-first birthday. The poem was not my greatest, but it was accepted with gratitude by many who knew my sister. Somehow, the poem seemed to help with the grief process.
From that experience, I learned that, for me at least, poetry mattered more than a busy schedule. Poetry was something I had to do.
Since that time, I’ve spent a lot of time reading poetry, learning about it, listening to other poets, and writing my own poems. There is much more to learn, but I’m making some headway. Many of my poems have appeared in magazines, journals, and newspapers. I do a lot of readings. And I’ve published two volumes of poetry, along with my memoir, I Survived Cancer, but Never Won the Tour de France, which includes a poem between each chapter.
During the last year, as I’ve received shock after shock concerning my declining health, poetry has been a close friend. At times it has been therapy. At other times it has been more like breathing. It has helped me struggle through during difficult days.
During the course of this series, I hope to introduce a new poem from time to time in these blogs. Perhaps some of these will add depth to this story by bringing a brief smile or by allowing us to grieve the losses we’ve all faced.
Here’s one from my journal, dated November 10, 2008, a bit on the dark side:
Tug of War
“All that is left of a life!” –Death Be Not Proud, by John Gunther
Death takes a scalpel
and carves off
another slice of my life.
But life holds on,
creates something new,
an experience, friend, memory.
Death tries again,
closes an entire route
and so many possibilities.
But life regenerates,
clears a promising path
and guides me that way.
And what of cancer?
Doing all it can to live,
killing us both in the process.
Have I Given Up?
Considering the nature of this series and the direction it seems to be heading, I suppose there are some out there wondering whether or not I have given up. There are theological issues attached to the answer I give, and I don’t want people to start whispering.
Well, the short answer is I haven’t given up. Although many great doctors have indicated we are headed down a practically impossible road, the human body is unpredictable and strange. Many people more sick than me have recovered, miraculously, unexpectedly, although that number is likely dwindling.
When it comes down to it, who really knows what will happen?I would never want to “give up,” even on the longest long shot.
I will soon be looking into joining a medical trial, if one is available. Also, several alternative treatments have been proposed (by strangers for the most part), so I will have to make decisions on how Andy Kaufman I want to go. Someone recently sent me a healing potion that consists of pure maple syrup and baking soda. Yummy! There’s even some tea at a store in town that’s rumored to be just what the doctor ordered.
So, no, I haven’t given up. I even told this to the Oklahoman team when this series was first proposed.
“I feel I need to tell you something, before we move forward,” I said with a serious tone.
“What’s that?” the team leader said.
“I’m still going to try to live,” I confessed.
“Well, that would be an even better ending to the story,” one reporter replied.
Amen to that.
Chemo “therapy”
It’s been a tough week.
With chemo, you’re never quite sure how your body will react. Some weeks I do fine. Other weeks, like this one, I don’t.
This week I slept nearly twenty hours straight, from Monday night to Tuesday night. Then, I was able to make it to work on Wednesday. But on Thursday, I had no energy and couldn’t eat. Again, I spent a lot of time in bed.
Why do it, i.e., chemotherapy? Well, I’m trading bad days like these for a few more good ones. That’s the hope anyway, although you’re never quite sure.
Run Away!
Four days after I was told I have “months, not years” to live, my kids ran away from home.Let me elaborate. My kids, seventeen year old Maddye and fourteen year old Ford, didn’t “run away from home” in the normal sense of those words. My wife and I knew where they were, eventually. We were in communication with them, via cell phones, texting. They didn’t flee because they were mad at us, in the way a defiant ten-year-old packs a few items and heads off to a tree house until it gets dark or his or her stomach starts growling.
No, they ran away because they were in grief, scared about their future, unable to process the probability that “dad” will likely be leaving them soon. They left because they’d discovered the hard truth that bad things happen to good people-or, in my case, fairly good people-and there’s nothing they can do about it.
Here’s what happened. Last Tuesday, we set off for what should have been a normal day-normal that is for a family dealing with cancer and terminal illness. My wife left for work at 8 a.m., heading to the middle school where she teaches. I set off to visit with doctors in Oklahoma City in preparation for my twentieth chemo session scheduled for the next day.
When I left, the kids were getting ready for school. They’re both in high school, by the way, and drive together, usually leaving at about 8:30 a.m. We said our normal goodbyes and have a great days. Nothing particularly ominous was looming on the horizon.
I got home early from work that day, at about 4:30 p.m. It had been a long day of speaking to friends and coworkers about our latest round of bad medical news. The kids weren’t home when I arrived, but that’s not so unusual. They often grab a Coke after school and don’t get home till after five.
My wife was scheduled for her yearly mammogram that day and wasn’t supposed to be home until late, probably 7 p.m. Tired, I sat down to watch some television coverage of the upcoming election.
At 5:20 p.m., I heard the garage door opener. Good, I thought. The kids are home.
But as I went to greet them, I saw my wife sitting in her car, talking on the phone. She had obviously been unable to keep her scheduled appointment.
Oh crap, I thought. Something’s wrong.
I immediately called Maddye, who answered on the second ring. “Hey,” I said. “Where are you?”
“Ummm, at Grannies.”
“Funny,” I said. “Where are you?”
“At Granny’s,” she repeated.
I was unable to process, much less believe, this information. Granny’s house is two hours away, near the Oklahoma/Kansas border. I wasn’t even sure Maddye knew how to get there.
“Seriously, Maddye. Where are you?”
“At Granny’s. I left you a message.”
“Okay… where’s Ford?”
“He’s with me.”
“So, let me get this straight, you guys drove to Granny’s after school?”
“No. Before school.”
“You skipped school?”
“Yeah.”
“Great. That’s just great,” I said before I could stop myself. “That’ll make our lives easier!” Frustrated, I hung up the phone.
But later, after my wife and I had had the chance to talk to each other and to Granny, after we’d taken some time to process what had happened, my attitude changed. We came to realize that our kids had simply felt compelled to act, to do something, anything, in response to the unfortunate and unfair turn of events that had invaded our lives.
“I don’t want to go to school,” Ford had told his sister. “I’m too sad about Dad.”
And so they skipped town. They hadn’t gone out and gotten drunk. They hadn’t turned to drugs or meaningless sex. They didn’t vandalize someone’s property. They hadn’t hurt themselves.
They had instead turned to each other. Hurting deeply, facing challenges few teenagers have to face, they had decided to leave their grief behind, if only for a day or two. Together, they drove to their beloved Granny’s house, for there they felt safe and loved. There they could breathe.
And even more importantly, perhaps, at Granny’s house, they could open up and say some things they’d been unable to say to us, face-to-face. It is difficult, if not impossible, to take on the grief of someone you love, especially when you’re dealing with your own. So instead of opening up to LeAnn and me, who were both struggling, they told Granny how they were feeling. And then, later, after that bridge had been crossed, they spoke to us on the phone, with the safety of many miles between. This took some of the pressure off, for the moment at least, as they let us know of their sadness.
As a result we had meaningful conversations about grief. We discussed how we should allow ourselves some time each day to be sad, but then how we should put away the sadness till the next day, thereby allowing ourselves to experience whatever joy that particular day had to bring. And we cried, of course.
And so, all things considered, I’m glad my kids ran away that day. It allowed us to come together as a family, to refocus, to let the kids’ teachers know what was going on, and to learn. Their act was not one of defiance, but one of survival. In some strange way, it provided hope, hope that no matter what happens to me, at least they’ll still have each other.
Are You Sure?
When the folks at the Oklahoman asked if I wanted to participate in this series, I had no quick, definitive answer. Before I could say yes or no, I needed to know exactly what I was getting myself (and my family) into.
But when I met with the “team” to discuss the project, it became clear that we were all embarking on something of an unknown mission here. The underlying assumption in this series is that I’m terminally ill, dying of cancer that has metastasized to my liver and lungs. And so, unless something miraculous happens, it is unlikely that I’ll be here in a year. The Oklahoman believed my journey was a story worth telling, a story that could be helpful to other people who are facing such a crisis.
But how do you do that? Death is a taboo subject in America–and not particularly holiday-friendly at that. How do you tell that story in a meaningful way? And why choose me? After all I’m certainly not the first or last to walk this lonely road.
As for the “why me,” I guess the Oklahoman felt I was uniquely situated to help tell this story. After all, I’d written a memoir in 2006 on the subject of living with cancer, entitled I Survived Cancer, but Never Won the Tour de France. Also, half of my latest poetry book, Antidotes & Home Remedies, dealt exclusively with health. Plus, I’d written for newspapers and magazines for years.
And as for the “how do you tell it” dilemma, the Oklahoman thought it best to tell the story from many angles. Senior writer Ken Raymond and photojournalist John Clanton were assigned to follow me around. Ken would write stories for the paper, and he would blog along the way. John would tell the story through videos and photographs. I would submit daily blogs, joined by my wife and kids from time to time. And my good friend Charlotte Lankard (who helped make this series possible), a therapist and Oklahoman contributor, would also submit blogs.
When I began telling my friends about the project, they all asked the same question: “Are you sure?” That is, am I sure I wanted to be this revealing, to have a reporter and camera guy following me around everywhere, to let it all hang out? And, more importantly, was my family ready?
Well, we’ve discussed that issue a lot and here’s what we’ve decided. Rather than just cut ourselves off from everyone and feel sad about what was happening, we had the chance to turn something bad into something good. Maybe, just maybe, we could tell our story and other people facing similar issues would realize that they are not alone. Maybe, just maybe, we could participate in something that is bigger than we are, something that could somehow make a difference.
With that goal, we march on.
